sora no woto

It’s our first podcast of the new year. What else can you expect from an anime podcast? Obviously the forecast for some of the new series coming out, along with us rambling. It is also the podcast while we finally realize we’re essentially without a name. What good is a podcast without a name? Aside from that, we talked about that zombie anime that’s currently out (Kore wa zombie desu ka?), and somehow manage to stay on topic for a good amount of time.. but not without some off-topic commentary.

Fractale gets a rather serious discussion out of us, which we normally tend to veer away from doing. Our focal point on our Fractale discussion is the difference in culture and established norms as we know them today. With the evidence only in spoken lines I assume Fractale is definitely way past the 22nd century, but until dates are given to us, I’ll just have to use an ambiguous time frame. And since we fancy data hopping once we learn about A-1 Picture’s involvement with Fractale, we end up talking about Sora no Woto.

Oh, and I truncated the podcast and a huge section after the 1 hour and 25 minute mark was removed because I honestly think it was wasted podcast time. The first time I’ve ever listened to my own podcast and thought, “Wow. That was really drawn out and unnecessary.” Leave a comment if you’re interested in hearing the full recording.. which I doubt will happen. Nice musical intermission for that cutout was from the Death Smiles OST.

But if you’re wondering what it was, we end up rambling and finding an interesting conversation piece: think of a Japanese name, or surname, used several times over within anime. Then spit out the character you’re thinking of, off the top of your head. See how far your character knowledge reaches without being overwritten with recent & popular characters. We all know who Haruhi is. But is your Haruhi the same as someone else who’s definitely seen way more than you?

The fairly new time slot, The Power of Anime (Anime no Chikara), has given us two original series. I liked the first show, Sora no Woto, while the second one wasn’t my taste. I can’t dismiss the efforts of these shows though. There was a while when a good amount of people were complaining about the amount of adaptation series. Consider that there are plenty of manga with an install base of fans that would watch its adaptation. Whether it’s good or not isn’t as important as realizing that these shows will air with a certain amount of people watching. TV Tokyo and Aniplex are doing us a great service by providing us that injection of original anime not based on differing source material such as light novels or manga. Here’s hoping that they can keep providing the goods.

I, for one, am super pumped for the third anime to be shown in this slot, which is Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin. The trailer is above if it hasn’t been obvious.

I actually had a large post ready to be uploaded, but I realized I was just typing for the sake of getting some kind of article up that was supposed to sound professional.

After a single proofread, I deleted it.

Instead, here’s a series of short sentences that describe the current anime season from the narrow viewpoint of yours truly.

K-ON! Season 2 is Kyoto Animation giving us our weekly moe blob injections. Ichiban Ushiro no Dai Maou is the sequel to Seitokai no Ichizon. Working!! is for people who either like minimal story settings or have worked in the service industry. Kaichou wa Meido-sama is our seasonal JC Staff production with lovely watercolor/pastel background scenery porn. Angel Beats has the OP with a girl playing a piano. Heroman takes place in California. B Gata H Kei has Yukari Tamura. Ookiku Furikabutte is a baseball sports anime with a competent animation team. I don’t care about Major (another baseball series). Arakawa Under the Bridge is done by SHAFT. Mayoi Neko Overrun is love, since it has loli and zettai ryouiki. House of Five Leaves is a bakery and samurai talk boxes without any actual cooking. Kiss X Sis is for perverts. Senkou no Night Raid replaced Sora no Woto.

And I think Da Capo is happening again. (Yay!)

Picture of Kanata doing it wrong done by broiler (WARNING: Link is NSFW!)

Sometimes if you play too many games, you’ll end up burnt out like the girl in the above picture. There’s only one way to cure that: play a crappy game so you’re happy with the stuff you do have on hand. I can’t say that I’ve personally purchased or owned a game that was absolute suck. I can, however, remember how much some NES games I might have loved were actually fairly bad. Even that kind of logic fails, as I’ve found myself enjoying those games for sucking the way they do. Most of this feeling is due to nostalgia. This tends to apply to anime as well. I often opt to watch some anime I could consider bad, but end up enjoying it to a degree.

Once in a while you just have to press F5. So here’s another refreshing update from yours truly, baked in the oven. This podcast is so crisp and burnt, it might as well be carbon. And we all know humans are carbon-based life forms, so eat up, dammit.Eat the podcast. NOW.

For once, I think I’ll use an image that’s straight forward and relates to what’s in the podcast. And yes, I’ve finally got a new podcast up. Sometimes you just get random downtime you can’t get around. Besides that, we’re getting used to the format, and now focusing on few topics to improve podcast runtime and reduce the noise. But no less trainwrecks and derails.

I think it’s become obvious that we’re very excited for Bad Company 2. We’ve mentioned this game nearly every podcast (I think). But we managed to squeeze in Street Fighter IV and fighting games, the L.U.R.K Mod for STALKER, and various anime tidbits including Hanamaru Kindergarden, Sora no Woto, K-ON!! (2nd Season), Queen’s Blade, Bakemonogatari and something else within our maser sights.

The LURK Mod got a recent status update, which makes me think we’ll be seeing version 1.1 soon. I hope.